


Hook, Line, and Sinker

by definehome



Category: White Collar
Genre: Canadian spelling, Case Fic, F/M, Gen, M/M, Oxford Commas, Prostitution
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-28
Updated: 2013-05-31
Packaged: 2017-12-13 06:57:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/821364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/definehome/pseuds/definehome
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peter willingly takes on a case of mortgage fraud as a favour for a friend and Neal is ostentatiously bored.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Illuminated Gallery Art

**Author's Note:**

> Beta-ed by onebrightroad but absolutely all mistakes are mine.

Neal tossed the rubber band ball almost silently. Up-down, up-down, up-down. This current distraction technique was a vast improvement over the loud up-down-thwack, up-down-thwack, up-down-thwack, up-down-thwack that, earlier, had marked the balls return to Neal’s palm. At least he was _trying_ to be quiet. Still, it was distracting; up- down, up-down, up-down. The flicker of movement drew Peter’s eye. Not every time, but often enough; up-down, up-down, up-down. He could tune out the rhythmic, regular, frequency of Neal’s solitary game of catch; up-down, up-down, up-down. Every so often, unpredictable to anyone but Neal (who was probably doing it on purpose), the pattern would stutter; up-down... And Peter’s eyes would be drawn, reflexively to the brightly coloured ball; up-down, up-down.

Neal was ostentatiously bored.

“May I go?” Neal asked, not for the first time that afternoon.

“No,” Peter’s response was fast autonomic.

 Up-down, up-down, up-down up.... Peter snatched the ball out of the air and placed it firmly on the desk.

 “How about now?” Neal asked with false hope in his voice.

 “The answer’s still no, Neal, so stop asking.”

 “Why not?” Neal pressed. This question was just a variation on the same theme, but Peter was ready for a small break so he entertained it. He pushed back a little from his desk and gestured at the papers strewn across the room.

 “Because I need you on this.” Neal scooted forward, and pulled the nearest paper-clipped file towards him. He flipped through it disdainfully then tossed it back on the desk.

 “It’s mortgage fraud.” Neal announced, as if that wasn’t already general knowledge. “I have no expert insight to offer, I’m sorry.”

 Peter cocked his head and grinned sarcastically, if Neal wanted to play, they could play a little bit. “You’re being so helpful.”

 “You could call me if you find something interesting,” Neal offered with something that sounded like hope, like a phone call was any kind of substitute to Neal’s awesome brain focused on the issue at hand and putting the pieces together. “Or, here,” Neal tossed a key ring at Peter. “Come get me at June’s. She’s in California for 6 months, and I’m house-sitting.”

 “Or you could sit here and find something interesting yourself,” Peter counter-offered.

 “We don’t even know if this is actually fraud – for all you know it’s a bunch of unrelated mistakes that Louise’s girlfriend is ‘Beautiful Minding’ into a conspiracy.”

 “I promised Louise I’d look into it,” Peter reiterated.

 Neal affected an expression of shocked amazement. “I’ve been told that you and I are not precisely the same person.” Peter took a moment to admire the stories that Neal was able to create with just the curve of his lips as Neal warmed into his pitch. “Therefore, your promises are probably not binding on me. On the other hand, if you gave me a little more space I might have a better chance of learning how to be a productive member of society.” That was new, and the novelty caught Peter’s attention. His gaze sharpened as Neal continued. “You know... try to get a real job?”

Even as he started trying to figure out Neal’s angle, Peter fell back into their standard banter. “If I gave you more time out of my sight I have no doubt you’d find a real job ... and then there’d be nothing I could do to help you.”

 “Oh! I’m wounded,” Neal protested in a tone that told Peter he was anything but, but he was still pressing the issue. “You know they let Abignale try to find work.”

 “Try being the operative word,” Peter snorted. “You’re better off here.”

 “I could do consulting work,” Neal pointed out, and his tone was still light, but there was steel somewhere behind the charm. This was something that Caffrey wanted, and he wanted it badly.

 “You’re doing consulting work,” Peter replied carefully, unwilling to completely shut the door on a conversation that might yield clues to Neal’s state of mind.

 “I could be paid well to do consulting work,” Caffrey pushed again.

 “I thought Moz said the con wasn’t about the money,” Peter pointed out.

 “That was con-fidence scams, not con-sulting,” Neal articulated, as if to a slow child.

 Peter sighed, and swivelled his chair so that he could stand up. This was going nowhere. He slipped around the desk and leaned against it, half sitting, but still looming over Caffrey in his guest chair.

 “Do we need to talk about this?” Peter said, not gently, but seriously. “Are you unhappy here? Not the mortgage fraud. Because I know you’re bored, but this?” Peter waved his hand around, gesturing to include his office and the bullpen, and the view of New York City outside. “The FBI doesn’t pay much, relative to private security, but you’re doing good here. Regardless, there are always options.” Peter indulged in a bit of an overemphasis on the last word, even if there was absolutely no chance he was going to screw with their arrangement. Peter caught a flicker of something, real and raw, as Neal reached around Peter to lift a folder off the desk. It was gone too fast to pin it down.

“No, I’m not unhappy.” Neal flipped whatever internal switch controlled his expressions and grinned up at Peter, charm and charisma shining off his face. “No need to renegotiate.”

Peter nodded sharply, and re-seated himself, carefully tagging the conversation as something he needed to re-examine later. He pulled a different stack of papers forward, but tapped them once while he let an amused grin spread over his face.

“Besides, with too much time on your own, I’m pretty sure you’d figure out how to replace the Statue of Liberty with a replica.”

Neal glanced up from his folder with an exaggerated grimace on his face. “That’s not particularly probable, or really all that funny. You know that right?” Peter shrugged.

It wasn’t until they’d both returned their gaze to the files that Neal added, “Anyway, she’s not within my radius.”

 

* * *

 

 

“Thank you.” The third bank customer nodded in acknowledgement as Peter waited, holding the door wide open trying to get Neal into the building through sheer force of will. Neal was just standing there three feet away, resolutely ignoring Peter’s stare. Neal was staring south-west, through the yellowing leaves and branches of Battery Park, shifting from side to side as if straining to glimpse something - maybe the Statue of Liberty. He was certainly facing the right general direction for that.

 “Neal, I have a dinner date with Elizabeth tonight. You are not going to make me late.” Caffrey turned back, grinning widely.

 “Just casing the place,” Neal offered unrepentantly, but he accepted Peter’s hand on his back, gently shoving him through the door and guiding him past the client kiosks to the main floor meeting room.

 “Lynn Weiber,” a smartly (though not Caffrey-level stylishly) dressed woman in her late 30’s strode forward and introduced herself as Peter approached. “You must be Peter and Neal.” She offered her hand to Peter first, but didn’t neglect to greet Neal. “Louise showed me your pictures. We can talk in here.”

Lynn settled them at a long conference table that had three manila folders on it.  “I know Louise gave you copies of what I think are the fraudulent mortgage files, but these are hard copies profiling the actual homeowners in question. They have their mortgages with us, so I could get this with raising flags but... you can’t take them.”

Peter pulled one of the folders towards him and opened it; from the rasp of paper against wood, he supposed Neal had done the same. “$400,000”, Neal noted, like it was something important. Peter checked the data on his own appraisal report, but didn’t see anything obviously amiss at the first glance.

“My appraisal values this particular property 2 million dollars, so?”

“$400,000” Neal said again significantly, and Peter looked up to find Neal and Lynn sharing a glance.

“What am I missing?” Peter looked at both of them, and then down at his own file. It looked to be in order and filled out properly, signed and sealed.

“The appraisal on this property” Neal tapped the appraisal file in front of him. “Never topped a million, but the mortgage I looked at last night? Guaranteed for this address, so presumably this property? It was for 1.5 million dollars.”

“Let me see that...” Peter pulled the document across the table. It was a perfectly done and up to date appraisal for $400,000. “Are you certain?” Peter cast his mind back, and though he could remember the orders of magnitude, without the details in front of him he couldn’t be certain.

“It’s strange, but it could just be random error,” Neal warned him. He’d somehow managed to get his hands on a squishable stress ball shaped like a safe, but he wasn’t squeezing it – he was throwing it up and down, up and down. “The cases might not be related, I mean, that one –” Neal tossed the safe at the folder Peter had abandoned, just as Peter was about to snap. “That mortgage was only for about $30,000, and like you said, the property was worth 2 million.” It didn’t really make sense. Aside from the fact that both of them were mortgages erroneously attributed to the wrong property and then defaulted on, there was nothing to link the mistakes, and they could very likely have been clerical errors, negligence on the part of the bank if the home-owner could prove it in court, but fraud? Peter’s gut said yes.

“Are you sure we can’t convince you to...” Peter started to ask, his tone more gentle than it would have been if he’d actually been assigned the case. Lynn shook her head.

“These customers haven’t done anything wrong, and we already have significant exposure due to the foreclosure attempts on their homes. I'm violating policy by showing this to you at all, if we provably violate their privacy as well... You’re going to need a warrant. I’m sorry.”

Peter shook his head. Even when a case was dropped in their laps, it couldn’t be easy.  

 

* * *

 

Peter folded his menu and watched his wife study the offerings. Whatever she ended up selecting, Peter knew it wouldn’t be anything he would have picked if left to his own devices, but it would be perfect.  As his gaze softened, Peter’s eyes focused past Elizabeth to the darkness in the window.

Through the glass there was nothing visible of the New York night, except for thick streaks of grey-white rain and a distorted reflection of the life going on in the dining room behind him.

This windowed alcove was not the sort of preferred seating he would have expected, not when the meal itself had been a gift from a client. But Elizabeth had smiled at the maître d', open and friendly, and they’d found themselves tucked up in an almost private nook, away from the din of the main room and the wet cold that snuck in every time someone ducked inside, escaping the November torrent.

There was no reason for Peter to focus on one voice, out of the drone and clatter of the mostly full restaurant. It wasn’t louder than the ambient noise, and no awkward, stochastic, pause in the aggregate conversation had highlighted this one speaker above all others, but there was something about the patter and the syllables and the rise and fall of amusement that was terribly, achingly, annoyingly, familiar. Peter’s attention narrowed until all he could hear was Neal’s voice, crystal clear, over and through the light tones of Elizabeth ordering for them both and the deeper replies of the waiter.

When they were alone again at the table, Peter shifted in his seat, craning to look over his right shoulder and trying to see the entire room in a single searching glance that wouldn’t embarrass him if it turned out to be nothing.

And so he saw nothing.

There were diners, and servers, and plain men in expensive suits, but he didn’t see Caffrey among them. Still, the thread of his voice was there, in fits and stops, and Peter’s aural attention seemed to cling to it. A Caffrey he couldn’t see, something small whispered, was a Caffrey capable of mayhem.Peter’s fingers itched to find a computer, to pull up the anklet’s tracking data and to reassure himself of what he knew to be truth. But even if he’d brought a laptop, that action was something Elizabeth would kill him for; it would be a justifiable homicide. Peter twisted, shifting again to scan the room, but a touch from Elizabeth stilled him. With her left hand she pointed steadily to the back, behind his left shoulder, to another alcove tucked into a blind spot  that Peter couldn’t have seen without rotating his chair at least twenty degrees.

And there he was. Neal was half standing, his hat at a ridiculous angle and his head bent over the table doing something apparently amusing with four forks and a cube of sugar. Neal smiled triumphantly at a golden-haired woman and slid into a seat beside her like he belonged there. He slipped a hand around and placed it possessively on the skin left bare on her back by a cut-out in the sleek green dress. 

Elizabeth’s hand closed tightly around the meat of Peter’s thumb, and Peter stayed seated, repressing the urge to take possession of the evening and bare Neal’s ankle to his companions, as a favour to the honest and a warning to those who might have been too charmed by Caffrey’s smile.The impulse passed, and when Peter returned to Elizabeth, his gaze and his focus slid past her to the window at her back. The tilt of his hat and the curve of Neal’s profile were reflected, bent and twisted, in the glass in front of him. That small token of surveillance was enough. Peter let Neal’s voice fade into the general murmur of conversation and focused on the lines of Elizabeth’s lips and the warmth of her laugh. Elizabeth smiled across the table they engaged in dissecting the constitution of the bisque. It was enough. Peter let himself fall into his moment and let himself be happy.

 After heirloom greens, bison medallions and scallops, cheese and fruit, something chocolate and just enough wine that he could still drive home, Peter braced himself against the rain, and left Elizabeth in the restaurant so that he could bring the car around. As he passed the picture window, Peter spared a glance inside at Caffrey’s party. Neal was smiling into the same golden hair, his mouth moving in some pretext of a confidence that Peter could have read from his lips with little effort. It looked like a con, with a brilliant slick smile and fabricated secrets.

 Still, Peter let himself hope, for Neal much more than for himself, that this scene of social frivolity, illuminated like gallery artwork, was not another one of Caffrey’s forgeries.

 

* * *

 

 

When Peter got back from lunch--well, the street meat he grabbed from a vendor on the sidewalk--Neal had somehow managed to commandeer the long table in the conference room and he’d amassed a crowd. It served him right; Peter knew better, he really did, than to leave an under-utilized Caffrey alone in the office. When he was busy, engaged and occupied, there was no one more efficient or insightful. But that required buy-in from the felon himself, and if the assignment didn’t suit his fancy… well, Peter knew better.

It didn’t look like there was much damage, just a few underutilized agents clustered around an arrangement of four pens, three forming a “U” and a forth making the “U” more of  a “Y” with the USB key placed carefully in the center of the U. Neal was sitting quietly in a little back from the edge of the table and chair, biting his cheeks and shaking his head slightly when he was addressed. He didn’t seem to be doing anything to cause a disturbance, but he was the locus of activity, and, since the files he had pulled to cross-reference were lying in a neat pile, just out of reach, he was clearly not doing what he was supposed to be.

Peter squared his shoulders and mounted the stairs. Neal knew he was coming, Peter was sure of that, because he sat up a little straighter, and he cast a glance in the direction of his work, but he didn’t make a move to warn anyone, or to take it up.

“And there still has to be a goblet when you’re done?”  a sophomore probie, not even from White Collar, asked. Peter didn’t wait to hear the answer, he cleared his throat, and the room went silent. There wasn’t a whisper, not a rasp of fabric against fabric, no one moved.

“I think that’s time, then.” Neal said brightly, “Which means…” Which meant that Caffrey had something riding on this. Peter groaned internally.

“Wait a minute,” Peter’s upheld hand stopped the agents in their tracks as they wisely made to disperse. Peter glanced over Neal’s shoulder at the game laid out on the table. It was familiar. “What’s the goal?”

“To get the egg out of the cup,” the probie answered, when no one else did.

Peter nodded and gazed down at the arrangement, after a moment, he slid the base of the U horizontally half a pen width and repositioned the far right edge of the cup at the far left edge of the now upside down y.

“I think that satisfies the requirements,” Peter nodded at a Caffrey, who nodded back slowly. “And I think,” Peter met the eyes of every junior agent in the room. “That we all have better things to do than pushing pens around a desk. It’s all settled here,” Hopefully that killed off any ideas about collecting on the bet. “So scram.”

Neal got up to leave, but Peter put a restraining hand on his shoulder. “You stay.” Peter pulled the case files back towards them and flipped each one open, arranging them around the two of them as he sat next to Neal.

“What do you have for me?”

“That’s cold, Peter.” Neal replied, then closed his mouth with a snap. “I mean, this is a cold case. No matter how recently it came to our attention. The trail is so cold it’s ice.”

“What about this?” Peter held up an appraisal form and pointed to the signature of one of the bank’s vice presidents at the bottom. “There has to be something… Linda Green… can tell us about the property she appraised.”

Neal shook his head. “Which Linda Green?” he asked, and held up a second document, some printout he’d pulled of the internet from a court case in Atlanta, with the name Linda Green scrawled across the bottom, in a completely different script.

“They’re all robo-signed. I’m sure of it – but good luck actually proving it. All the back-up documentation, the originals are gone, this is what the bank produced when they were asked for verification on the loan.”

Peter rolled his eyes and tossed the file back on the table. “All six of them?”

Caffrey nodded. “There are different names, but there is no online trail, no hint in directory searches or even Facebook or Linkedin that a person by that name ever held a position of responsibility at that bank. It’s classic robo-signtaurs.” 

“And the bank will continue claim that there was such an employee, but that she quit years ago, and then, of course, they left no forwarding address,  et cetera, et cetera. Now it’s just an adult that’s disappeared into America, as is here right, and no actual evidence to prove that it’s fraud, but enough to make us suspicious.” Peter mused.

“Like you said, it’s a classic set up, and familiar enough to start a Federal case?” Peter shook his head and reminded himself of the new cases he had actually been assigned. “It’s just not _our_ Federal case. Alright, close it up.” Peter pushed to his feet, but some small piece of grit was stuck in the corner of his hypothalamus, irritating his memories. “Drop the files on my desk though. I want to give the whole thing a chance to stew for a bit before we lock the door.” Who knows, with enough polishing it might end up as a pearl?

Neal nodded, and obediently started collecting the files, probably happy to see the end of this particular non-case. Peter headed towards the door.

“Where did you see that before?” Neal asked, stopping Peter before he’d moved past the door frame “You figured it out faster than I did the first time, and I didn’t even tell you all the rules.”

 “Are you saying I couldn’t solve a bar-room puzzle without you?” Peter asked. “That I somehow cheated?  The first time I laid eyes on that arrangement was when you were doing it with your friends.” Peter indulged in a bit of mild deception and gestured at the space that had been filled with agents two minutes ago.

Neal half nodded, not quite accepting, but ready to move on.

“Anyway,” Peter smiled to himself and stepped out the door. “I figured it out last night.”

 

* * *

 

Saturday night, Neal was sitting right at the edge of his radius He’d been there for half an hour or so, moving just enough that Peter was sure that he wasn’t dead, sleeping, or otherwise incapacitated, but not moving a whole lot. It wasn’t a thought Peter had too often these days, but if he was going to run, that would be a perfect place to do it. He would have quick access to the tunnels, quicker than any force Peter could mobilize, and after that a land border through a reserve to Quebec would obviate the need to actually go through any official channels to get out of the country. As cooperative as the Canadians were, the RCMP had its own problems to deal with.

Still, it was more habit than necessity that had Peter access his work desktop remotely and pull the address of the club that corresponded to the latitude and longitude of Neal’s anklet. It wasn’t anywhere Caffrey had shown an interest in visiting, not as the con man and thief Peter had profiled five years ago, nor as the semi-reformed consultant Peter worked on maintaining today. Something didn’t fit.

_What are you up to?_

 It was a blunt text, but the media didn’t lend itself well to the niceties of polite foreplay. There was no reply for long minutes then Peter’s phone buzzed.

  _Having a drink,_  came the reply. Then, a moment later,

  _Maybe a smoke._

  _You don’t smoke._  Peter’s fingers hovered over the send button, but his mind raced through all the ways this could be a code or a clue, or a call for help, something other than Caffrey taking the piss. In the end he decided to call. 

 If the call hadn’t gone straight to voice mail, Peter told himself twenty minutes later, if he’d been able to hear Neal, in his own words and his own voice, assure him that nothing was wrong, then he wouldn’t be here. But that was just a story Peter told himself. If he was honest, he knew, the situation was wrong, off. If Neal was trying to say something, listening to his words wouldn’t have done much good at all. Peter had to see.

 The bar was darkened, and it felt like it should have been smoky, the rich ghosts of pipe tabacco and cigar smoke rose from the upholstery. Peter didn’t have to stretch his imagination to envision back areas with private sitting rooms that might still be ringed with fog.

 Peter took a place at the long counter and ordered a beer.  With his Blackberry out and comfortable in his hand, he looks substantively similar to at least three other men along the bar, checking their watches and biding their time until some dinner appointment, or alternative arrangement. The text he received didn’t change any of that cover.

 _Back left corner booth. Look but don’t touch._  Peter snorted into his beer and wondered if anything was more calculated to send him looming over Caffrey’s table.   

 _Please._ If the first text was almost enough to get Peter to his feet, the second was enough to keep him rooted to his stool. He shifted his weight slightly, tilting his head past the draft taps so that he could get a straight visual in the bar’s mirror to the booth in the corner.

The Caffrey he saw through the looking glass was different. He was still and serious, and somehow not Peter’s Caffrey at all. He spoke quietly and urgently, and his focus was totally and completely on the man seated next to him, their thighs brushing. Neal’s companion wasn’t old--younger than Peter, but probably older than Neal, with a slightly rounded form that spoke of too many hours behind a desk and not quite enough time on his feet--and in this world he was the restless one. The man shifted back and forth ever so slightly, as if vaguely uncomfortable, but he listened to Neal with rapt attention and spoke into the spaces Neal left to turn his lecture into a conversation.

Peter nursed his beer until it was flat and warm, and ordered another one. The bartender said nothing, but asked, with an apology that didn’t quite reach his eyes, if Peter wouldn’t mind settling his tab now. Peter slid cash over to the man, and didn’t take his eyes off Neal’s reflection.

The hands of the clock had passed midnight when Neal slid out from the arm that had curled behind his back and placed a chaste kiss on his companion’s forehead. As Neal slipped by the bar, Peter felt a hand brush his back, and he immediately slapped his pocket. The wallet was still there, with Peter’s IDs and his credit cards, but tucked into the space between the folds, for no discernible reason, was a small origami owl.


	2. Athene Guides

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No-one's telling Peter anything

There was a package of cigars on his desk, square with the corner and probably equidistant from either edge of the desk. Peter didn’t check.

Neal came sauntering in half an hour later, his hat at an exaggerated angle. Peter resisted the urge to physically knock it off, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to try to blow it over.

“So are you going to tell me what the hell that was last night?” Peter demanded. He’d been up all night fretting about the owl and the man, and what the hell Caffrey had been up to. Neal looked like he was full of energy.

 “Cultivating an informant.” Neal’s smile was pretty and tight, and looked like it might snap in an instant.

 “You are the informant.” Peter countered, but he let a little bit of interest color his statement.

 “That’s right,” Neal nodded. “And I have information.”

 “From that pasty faced desk-jockey?” Peter was harsher than he intended to be, but there was no way he was taking it back.

 “Aww, Peter,” Neal’s voice was teasing. “Is that jealousy I hear?”

 “Cut it Neal,” Peter warned, tapping the desk. His eyes fell on the package of cigars and he let his annoyance take control of his expression.

 “Fine, yes,” Neal gave in. He loved to play, but Peter knew he didn’t actually want anything more than a mild rise from him.  “From that pasty-faced desk jockey, who happens to work for our bank at a branch in Jersey.”

 “So?”

 “So, he pointed out that he typically collects on the mortgages in his area. That it’s unusual for him to have a whole bunch of residential properties scattered about the county. I’m not saying that there might not be more mobility in New York City, but – none of these are in the same borough.”

 “You do know I told you to leave it.” Peter tapped at the desk, above the package as if the paperwork was right there under his hands.

 “You also told me to drop the folders off on your desk.” Peter turned to gaze out the window at the street below, he’d taken them home, sitting up far too late over a dining room table, mapping out the victimized properties on a scatter plot of New York, and it was scattered. Peter turned back to Neal, and he could feel a slow smile threatening to break into his carefully dower expression.

  “The sheer diversity of location might in itself be a link.”

 “Give the man a cigar!” Neal drawled, but he settled into the seat by the desk and reached for the rubber band ball on Peter’s desk. Peter sighed, but let him.

 

* * *

 

Well ensconced by the bustling clatter behind the kitchen door, Peter tugged at his tie and scanned the room. He’d asked the kitchen staff and the servers for the location of his wife, but they had simply waved in the general direction of the milling crowd in the grand hall and told him she could be anywhere, supervising, evaluating, directing. But then again, she didn’t handle the wait staff directly. Not like she handled him.

Elizabeth’s text had been specific and sparse.

_Come by the party. Dress to fit in._

She wanted to see him. She didn’t want to make a scene about it. That much was obvious. What he didn’t know was if he was in trouble, or if she was lonely, or if she had somehow decided that being seen at this party would be good for his career. It could have been any or all, and he wouldn’t know until he found her.

Then Peter saw her, in a gorgeous ‘event’ dress that would have cost more new than any of his suits; but they never bought them quite new. One or two wears-old brought the gowns to something both of them could afford, and they still looked up to date. She was looking at him, more pointedly than any double finger could have done, and Peter stepped forward to gladly follow her summons.

It was in transition from the closed, steamy clatter of the low kitchen to the echoing buzz of the cavernous hall when Peter first heard the voice threading through the buzz. He trod a line to his wife, but his eyes searched the faces of the guests and eventually they found Neal, ensconced in the middle of a group of couples. Somehow his bespoke jacket both stood out and belonged, a king holding court.

Elizabeth didn’t actually have anything to say. She hugged him and planted a kiss on his lips that promised something more when they found privacy. But his eyes followed hers, and Peter knew that he wasn’t the one Elizabeth was concerned about. She’d heard about the origami owl, and even if they hadn’t spoken the words between them, Peter knew that they were thinking the same thing.

As the weight of their combined attention settled on Neal’s shoulders, Peter saw the full sweeping lines of Caffrey’s movements contract. He pulled one woman from the group, a shorter girl with tight ginger ringlets, and whispered something in her ear. As Peter took the first of about forty steps required to intercept the two of them, as the girl burst out laughing and shoved Neal away. Ten steps later Neal had grinned and shrugged enticingly, and as Peter closed the final distance Neal had been sent away, with the promise of re-admittance if he found something fruity and bubbly and sweet for his queen. 

“He’s cute,” Peter nodded in the direction of Caffrey’s retreating form. “What’s he trying to sell you?”

Wide-eyed panic gripped the girls features, confirming for Peter what had only been a stab into darkness.  “I’m not sure what you mean,” she managed eventually.  “Who are you exactly?”

Peter suppressed the instinct to pull out his badge. His lack of a valid invitation to a private party put him in a bit of a tricky spot, but he wasn’t building a legal case against Caffrey, or the girl for that matter, just looking for answers. “The handsome escort you had on your arm a moment ago, if I was looking to deal in a similar trade, what would you tell me?”

The girl's face cleared and the tenor of her voice came down an octave “If you mean my tutor, my father found him for me through a referral service,” she smiled at Peter, and it wasn’t nearly as good as Neal’s false grin. “We got along quite well, and I asked him if he’d like to accompany me this evening.”

“Your tutor?” Peter repeated, memorizing the term, but this conversation was quickly slipping sideways.

“Yes, art history” she offered blinking a little bit too quickly. “I’m taking a course.”

Peter nodded, at least that made sense. “Do you happen to have the name of the referral service?”

The girl pursed her lips and her fingers slipped into her clutch. “I think he gave me a card this afternoon, ah.” She pulled out a dark piece of cardstock, and handed it to Peter. ‘Athene Guides’ was written in slick letters across the surface of the card, underneath that was a series of 10 undifferentiated numbers,  and in the top right corner perched the embossed form of a snowy owl. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think he may have found something for me.” 

Peter fingered the business card gently, then tucked it into his wallet. He considered following the girl to Neal but let it go. There were hours left to the evening during which he could mount a pursuit. He wouldn’t, though; not yet.

 

* * *

 “So, what exactly are you looking for, Agent Burke?” Jeffrey Saigner spread his fingers wide and splayed his hands across the lacquered wood grain of his desk. His expression was shadowed, and the sun struck Peter full in the face forcing him to squint and look away in a less than intimidating manner. It was frustrating.

“We would like you to give us a list or let us search for out-of-zone mortgages that were issued erroneously.” Peter kept his voice low and professional, and studiously avoided using the word ‘fraud’.

“Those sorts of mistakes are few and far between.” Saiger assured them, and Peter would have been reassured, he really would have if he didn’t already know of at least half a dozen such cases. The man had it tone-perfect, his voice sounded sincere and honest, but Peter couldn’t really see his face, and that was probably intentional.

“Not so few,” Peter contradicted, and that might have been a little aggressive, but it was surely understandable. “But yeah, they’re pretty far between. We have reports of at least six assigned to a south Manhattan branch, and the properties themselves are all over the place.”

“Well, we obviously have a problem at a branch,” Saiger allowed, and briefly, too briefly, his head shifted to cover the sun. In that blessed moment Peter saw that his jaw was tight and the lips that formed the shadow of a smile were stretched thin and brittle. “The Battery Park branch serves commuters over a large geographical area. But this does not represent our standard practice.”

“With all due respect,” Peter started strong, but then Saigner moved his head, and once again Peter was arguing into the sun. “I don’t think this is a branch problem. I think someone is targeting your bank.”

“And I think this is an internal issue,” Saigner shot back, his voice hard. “If I understand correctly, this is not actually a Federal case. So, unless you have a warrant, I don’t think there’s anything else I can do for you.” Saigner stood, and blessedly blocked the sun. Peter stood with him, the meeting was clearly over.

“You’re making a mistake,” Caffrey’s voice came from below. He was still seated, apparently more than willing to be an affably immovable object in the face of an irresistible force.

“Mr. Caffrey,” Saiger addressed Neal for the first time since realizing he wasn’t actually an FBI agent. “I’m sorry, but I’m late for a meeting, I’ll have Matt show you out.” Saigner waved a young man over from the cubicle farm farther into the building. Peter barely managed to nudge Caffrey into a standing position before it would have constituted a ‘scene’.

“What was that?” Neal shook his head and gazed up at the shining monolith they had, very politely, been escorted out of.

“Fallout from the robo-signers.” Peter scrubbed a hand across his face. The bank wasn’t exactly the innocent victim of all of this. “They’d rather forgo our help identifying a pattern of fraud against them than show us more versions of some ‘Linda Green’s’ signature.”

 

* * *

 

El was gone. Not _gone_ gone, just gone. She was one for the day, gone for the evening, supervising an event that had been moved from New York to Chicago. The company was expanding and had decided to bring their event planner with them. It was a good thing--it should have been an amazing thing--that El was good enough, that her reputation was strong enough, that they didn’t think they’d be able to find someone better in Chicago.  It had taken 10 years of work on her part to build her business to that point, but selfishly, Peter hoped that this phase wouldn’t last long, that soon Burke Premier Events would be strong enough that she would say ‘No’ to out of town events. That it wouldn’t be worth her time or effort, because she had so much going on in New York already.

 Still, Peter mused, pulling out a dark piece of cardstock and examining the number on the front, on this particular Saturday, El’s absence gave him the space to hire a tutor.

 “Athene Guides, New York” a pleasant female voice answered the phone.

 “Yes, I, ummm,” Peter fumbled his words into the phone, only half the result of planning. “I, aah, I got your card from a woman I, sort of, met last week, at a party. She said you provide... tutors.”

 “Absolutely,” the voice on the other end of the line was perky and bright “What type of tutor are you looking for?”

 When Peter paused too long, the girl started reading from a list, Science, History, Math, Etiquette...

 “Modern Art?” Peter asked.

 “Absolutely, do you have any other specifications?”

 “Like what?” Peter probed, wondering if he was supposed to provided details about the job over the phone, or about the sort of person he wanted for the job.

 “Well, are you taking a particular course, or are you more interested in general instruction?”

 “Umm, general instruction.”

 “Great, we represent a lot of tutors, many of whom are qualified for that subject area. I could send you all the profiles and let you select one, or I could get a bit more information about your preferences and send you a more refined list. If it would help, I can list some of the traits as we describe them.”

 “Alright, fire away.”

  “Do you have a preference for age, gender, race, or... say... eye color.”

  “I... twenty five to thirty five, male, white, blue,” Peter started, giving Neal’s profile,  then had a horrible thought, what if he was over-specifying to the point where they only sent him Caffrey? “No, brown, most people have brown eyes anyway. Yes, brown.”

 “How about I just don’t specify eye colour,” the woman laughed and there was a pause as she entered the information. “OK, I’ve narrowed it down to five tutors who are all excellent selections. If you give me your e-mail address, I will send you their profiles, qualifications, fee schedules, and instructions for payment.”

 The selection of faces she e-mailed him included Caffrey’s, and Peter tried hard not to give it a second look. He selected an earnest-faced, attractive man – with brown eyes, a PhD candidate in mid 20th Century Art and nothing indicating anything in the way of exotic proclivities, paid the fee, and arranged a first meeting at the Stephen A. Schwartzman Building, Room 300, at 5 pm. Peter grinned. They did a good job of mimicking the trappings of an actual tutorial service.

 When the boy Peter ordered arrived actually carrying a satchel of books, Peter suffered a moment of doubt. Peter had never sat through this side of a tutorial. He had run a few sessions, in grad school, to earn a little extra cash, but that had been fifteen years ago--and in math, not art--but apparently the principles were the same, and the session from 5 pm until the library closed at 6 seemed to be the epitome of an academic tutorial.

 After they had shaken hands in front of the library, Peter got a call on his cell, and the pleasant receptionist let him know how to schedule Steven’s time for more personal, non-academic events, if he so desired.  Peter struggled not to crush his phone.

 

* * *

 

“They’ve reassigned our client base,” Lynn stated, her tone essentially flat, but Peter could sense the strain in Lynn’s voice, even across the ones and zeros transmitted to and from the cell towers.

 “Typical, punitive bullsh…” Peter clenched his fists too tightly, and without thinking, reached out and snagged a rubber band ball to quell his urge to swear at the phone.

 “Do they know I told you?” Lynn asked, and that was a good question. Peter searched his memory, but he and Neal had kept it clean in the meeting, focused on the data, not the source.

 “No,” Peter spoke clearly. “Although if they review the branch security video there will be a record of us talking, just remember, all the paperwork says that we came to you.”

 “Right, so I keep my head down and hope this blows over.”

 Peter tried not to sigh into the phone, because he knew that was the smart thing to tell her, but he needed something more. “I’m not sure what I can do to help you, professionally, but if we can show that it’s multiple banks, or that this crosses state lines, or if you can figure out anything, anything that might link the cases, we might have a case for digging deeper or even obtaining a warrant.”

 “That’s… not keeping my head down.” Lynn pointed out, and Peter could hear the hesitancy in her voice. It wavered a little, as if she wasn’t sure if it was worth the trouble of voicing her thought.

 “Please, I know it’s asking a lot, but if you’ve thought of anything, it might take the pressure, and the attention, off of your branch.”

 “Right”, Lynn exhaled harshly.  “I know of at least one, different branch, Upper West Side. It was a weird case and it was happy hour fodder. A homeowner tried to refinance the mortgage, but couldn’t because it was in a different name.

 “The branch manager, in working through it, asked why he was paying for a mortgage he didn’t take out. He said it was such a small amount, and he could afford it. Even though his name wasn’t on the loan, it was still his house listed as collateral and wasn’t worth risking the expense and legal hassles of fighting a foreclosure.”

 “Terry looked into it and cleared it for him, but… it might fit your pattern.” There was a commotion in the bull pen, something that sounded distinctly like not-work.

 “Why didn’t you mention it before?” Peter squeezed the ball, and paced over to his office door, gazing down at Caffrey as he sauntered in well after the start of the business day.

 “It wasn’t my branch,” Lynn continued. “I didn’t think of it in conjunction with the files I gave you…“ Peter pointed at Diana and pulled her into his office with a curl of his finger.

 “Which branch was it again?” Peter paced back to his desk, confident that she was coming up. “I’ll send someone over there now.”

 

* * *

 

Peter tried, he really did, but there really wasn’t quite enough work to keep Neal away from tutoring all the time, not to justify pulling him on evenings and weekends, and times when even a FBI agent who was actually married to his work might consider reasonably safe from the call of the job. And Peter wasn’t married to his work, he was married to Elizabeth. At least the mortgage fraud case was grinding up just enough dead ends that he could bang Neal’s head against them when he was short on challenges to keep the guy out of trouble.

 But Elizabeth was out of town three weekends a month this season, so this weekend--this weekend he should have manufactured a reason to pull Neal in and keep him there--instead he’d made reservations for dinner in Queens, well out of Caffrey’s range.

 Steven’s smile wasn’t nearly as polished as Caffrey’s but he seemed genuinely happy as Peter waved him over, and slid unselfconsciously into the seat Peter had left open, directly across the table, Steven’s back to the room and Peter facing both the door, and the window. With the lighting dimmed for dinner, Peter had a good view of the street.

 “How frequently do you do this?” Peter asked, after drinks and food had been ordered. It was his dime, but Peter wanted that extra little insurance that Steve would stick around for the interrogation.

 Steven let his lips curl up into a self-deprecating half smile, and tucked his head down to examine the grain of the tablecloth so that all Peter could see were the dark curls on the top of Steven’s head.

 “Five or six times a week,” he answered, relatively quickly, and then just... kept talking. “It’s enough to keep me here, I mean in Manhattan, while I do my PhD. Otherwise, there’s no way I could afford to eat. Most of that is actual tutoring, though. You’d be surprised what people pay to have someone watch their children do their homework. I mean they do call it Athene Tutoring, New York. And I get lots of college girls who want me to write their art history essay for them. That I won’t do, and we’re not actually allowed to. And then there are a lot of older women, who really.... well don’t want me to write their essays, but are looking for something private, but sweet. You’re my first guy.”

 The words stopped abruptly. Peter had been letting his gaze wander out the window, but it snapped back as Steven raised his head, and his eyes, just high enough to gaze at Peter’s mouth.

 “Is that a problem?” Peter asked, and he tried to make his voice gentle. He was a little afraid that the kid would think he was patronizing him.

 “Not at all,” Steve smiled again, and raised his eyes to Peters, but he could see nerves there, or maybe fear. His masks were nowhere near as good as Neal’s.

 “Do you ever have more... private... sessionss?” Peter asked with the same low, hopefully non-threatening voice. He nodded his thanks to the server as their meals came, but immediately recaptured Steven’s gaze.

 “Potentially,” Steven prevaricated, and dropped the pretense, allowing his nerves to show a little raw, and real. “But you didn’t book me for that.”

 Peter shifted backwards in his chair, not breaking eye contact but allowing the kid a little space. “So, I have a friend, and I think he works for your.... tutoring service. What is the likelihood that _he_ does private bookings?”

 Steven’s face shifted, he looked less nervous, but a little confused, and maybe a little hurt. “Why didn’t you ask for him then?” Peter didn’t answer, and let the silence do his work for him.

 “Not a hundred percent likelihood, that’s left up to us. Academic bookings still pay really well... for teaching.”

 “But not 0%, either.” Peter pressed, ignoring his food, and leaning forward slightly.

 “No,” Steven shook his head, and dropped his napkin onto his lap, using it as an excuse to look away from Peter. “Not 0%.”

Dinner itself  wasn’t unpleasant, Peter let the conversation drift, asked the young man questions about topics that had come up during their ‘academic’ session, and tried not to think about what the other diners were concluding. Most people wouldn’t care; they wouldn’t be interested in anything except their own meals and their own company. But even in a restaurant this small, someone would. Someone would be watching--as a game, or to alleviate the boredom of a bad date--and they would be making guesses, and drawing conclusions, and hopefully that person would never fall afoul of the FBI White Collar division so Peter would never have to actually speak to them. But dinner itself was fine.

“So, who’s your friend?” Steve asked, after the bill had been paid and all traces of their earlier conversation had faded into dimness of the dining room.

“Neal Caffrey.” Peter answered at once, then paused, correcting himself. “Or maybe Nick Halden, I’m not sure what name he would have given.”  Steve bit his cheeks, sucking in a small indent, before he let his breath out with a rush.

“Yeah, OK, Nick,” Steven nodded to himself. “Of course he’d be the competition...The odds are closer to a hundred then.”

Peter found himself on his feet. “Thanks, I...” He tossed his napkin on the table and put down more than enough cash to cover the tab. “Thanks.” He took two steps towards the door before turning around to face Steven, still seated and wearing a slightly stunned look. “Kid, he’s not your competition.” Peter spread his hands. “You’re an awesome teacher. Maybe you should stick to that.” Then he let his long strides take him out of the restaurant and back towards Manhattan. 


	3. The butler did it

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter and Neal go to Church

“What room this man is in?” Peter asked, flashing Neal’s picture at the hotel manager. The man glanced at the photograph and answered.

 “I couldn’t tell you that, sir.” The reply was polite, but laced with a solid note of finality. Peter squinted and pulled out his badge.

 “What room?” Peter tried again

 Peter had arrived at the Roosevelt Hotel a little out of breath, and definitely out of uniform, the urge to find Caffrey pushing any need to rationalize or question WHY out of his head.

 “I don’t know... Agent Burke.” The manager seemed totally unphased by the revalation that Peter was law-enforcement.

 “But you could find out?”

 The tracking data placed him here, tucked away in a room somewhere, plus or minus 4 meters, for the last hour.

 “Yes,”

 “Then do it,” Peter ordered, exuding a calm aura of confident authority that should have been effective. 

 The tracking data indicated movement of less than a meter over the last thirty minutes.

 “Do you have a warrant?” The manager asked, equally confidently and equally authoritatively.

 “No.”

“Then I’m sorry, but we will have to wait until you do.”

 And with no warrant or probable cause, no indication that Caffrey was running, there was nothing Peter or the tracking data could do.

 “Please feel free to wait for your friend in our lobby.” Peter’s fingers twitched with an urge to do something. Caffrey would have noticed it, but the involuntary action didn’t betray him to the manager.

He’d had years of practice suppressing the urge to strike, of banking the coals and waiting for the most productive time to turn on the heat. And this was not it.

“Thank you, I will,” Peter replied with a nod of his head.

Peter selected a straight-backed chair, with a little too much gilt and not enough padding but with a good view of both the elevators and the entrance and settled, with his tracking data up on his computer screen, in to wait.

His battery was down to 30% when Caffrey's data started to show motion, not much, but enough, given the sensitivity of the tracker. Small oscillations gave way to larger circles, and then Caffrey was moving, down a hall, and then steady, steady, still... in an elevator.

Peter positioned himself in front of the bank of silver-mirrored doors, suppressing his agitation, and forcing his feet to stillness. It wasn’t a capture, not really, but the anticipatory rush was there.

“Peter.” The door slid open and Caffrey covered his surprised quickly, expertly, so that it was virtually invisible beneath fabricated enthusiasm. Only the slight over emphasis on the first syllable betrayed him.

Peter didn’t grab Neal by the arm or restrain his wrists, he simply stood there, examining the man’s face, and tried to draw some sort of conclusion from what he was seeing. Caffrey, well groomed, but not perfect, well dressed, but not pressed, and maybe, just maybe, flushed in a lobby that was kept overly warm against the cold seeping in through the floor to lofted ceiling windows.

“Peter?” Neal turned up the volume on his smile. “Have you taken to stalking me on my time off?”

He was gorgeous, and far, far too confident.

“Were you... tutoring?” Peter demanded, he’d considered blunter phrasing, but there was no point in forcing unpleasantness quite yet.

“I see you did get something out of Alethia,” Neal smiled, “I wondered, but actually, it’s not your business.”

“Really, Neal?” Peter let a little bit of disbelief creep into his tone. “Do we have to go over this again? You’re released to my custody. You’re my responsibility.  It’s my business if I say it’s my business.”

“I’m not doing anything illegal.” Neal was still calm and smiling, but he took a small step to the side, an abortive attempt to move past, that Peter matched as reflexively as breathing.

“I’d like to check that for myself.” Peter held Caffrey’s gaze, and the constant pressure prevented Caffrey from shifting, or apologizing or otherwise engaging with the cluster of 3 men and 4 women released by the elevator. It didn’t make him deaf, and the exasperated expressions as each of them dodged and wove to avoid incidental, yet socially unacceptable, contact jostled Caffrey closer to the edge.

“Trust me,” Neal spread his hands palm up and moved again, this time stepping forward, into Peter’s space. Peter resisted the urge to move backwards, and they ended up far, far too close. Peter inhaled, processing Neal’s cologne, and an unfamiliar citrus shampoo.

“I’d like to,” Peter shook his head, “But you make it very hard Neal.”

Neal closed his eyes, and took a half step back, bending slightly. “This is Manhattan, Peter. What am I supposed to do?” There were so many ways that he could answer that, but it was enough of an admission that Peter counted it as a victory.

He still didn’t want to bust Caffrey, not officially, so some things really were best left unsaid unless he were fully committed to a hearing and actually making the considerations required to send Caffrey back to prison.

“Come on,” Peter ordered, and resisted the urge to look back and ensure Neal was following.

 

* * *

 

“Where are we going?”

Neal had followed, of course he had. Neal had followed and he had stayed mercifully silent in the SUV as Peter punched the address into the GPS. The tone of his question was studiously mild, but a glance told Peter that Neal was staring out the side window of the SUV, probably schooling his expression in the reflection.

“You saw the address,” Peter replied, trying to match Neal, note for casual note. He started the car and pulled into traffic as the GPS thought about their destination. Neal let his silence speak for itself.

“To check out that home-owner in Queens,” Peter relented after only a moment. If he was going to waste time playing guessing games it shouldn’t let it spill over into casework. The GPS spat out a single selection and Peter tapped it without looking.

“In three hundred yards, make a U turn…” Jennifer-the-computer figured out where they were and started back-seat driving. Peter tensed and checked his blind spot.

“Is he going to care about us interrupting his evening?”

“He has travel plans for Monday. If we wait he'll be out-of-state.” Peter replied, absently. Every word he said was true (although the complete truth was that this whole thing could wait until the home-owner got back) , but right now Peter was more concerned with merging safely--the car didn’t like his U-turn, and proximity warnings were forcing his knuckles to tighten around the wheel.

“And if you’re not careful, we'll be out of state as well.” Neal responded after a moment, there was an amused lilt to Neal’s voice that set Peter’s nerves on edge.

“What?” Peter asked, taking a risk and settling the lion’s share of his attention on what Neal had to say, even though Neal was staring at the display on his phone.

 “You do realize that we aren’t headed to Queens right? The GPS is sending us to Brooklyn.”

* * *

 

If it wasn’t raining, at least it was overcast. 

 Peter shared everything with Elizabeth, and so the story of Steven eventually came up. Elizabeth agreed, in theory, on the need to keep Neal closer; she just wasn’t a huge fan of Peter’s methods. It wasn’t the first weekend that Peter had worked through, and it wouldn’t be the last, but she didn’t have to be happy about it. Still, at 10 am, after a leisurely breakfast and a walk with Satchmo, Peter pulled out his phone and told Neal to meet him at the office in an hour.  It was just going to be him and Neal and the cold-case-du-jour.

 

“The butler did it.” Neal rolled his eyes and grinned up over the conference table.

“The butler didn’t do it,” Peter groused, shuffling his papers around and trying not to look up, in case Neal read the truth of it from his face. The problem was that the butler probably had done it.

“I think he did,” Neal pressed, his good humor only wearing thin over what was probably annoyance or frustration. "I think he took out a mortgage on the property in his Davidson's name, and I think that he's done it before to his previous employers." The whole case had become too obvious within their first hour. Neal had honed in on the activities of a certain Oxford-trained professional butler over the five years before his previous employer had mysteriously kicked the bucket. “I know, I know, we won’t know until we get the forensic audit. And that requires ordering files and talking to Janet in archives, all of which we can’t do on a Saturday. So, how about we call it a weekend, and you go catch the end of the game?”

“There isn’t a game on today, Neal,” Peter was going to have to pick more difficult files out of the pile.

“I’m sure there’s one somewhere,” Neal pointed out. “Or you can go have a pint, or surprise Elizabeth with dinner, or something that must be better than spending this entire, gloomy, day cooped up in here with me.”

“Don’t sell yourself short, you’re wonderful company.” Peter smiled and glanced up. He wasn’t exactly lying, and from half confused smile that flashed across Caffrey’s face, the guy sensed at least some of Peter’s honesty (and all of his sarcasm). “So we can go through the financial records of the heirs and come up with another possibility because going at a case with blinders on is a good way of charging an innocent man.”

“Not really my skill set,” Neal replied. “But if you have anything for me to consult on that is my forte, I’d be happy to...”

Peter pushed the file away, and folded his hands on top of the conference table, a little relieved that this was what Neal was attacking, not his blatant co-option of Neal’s limited free time. “I think I’ve heard that from you a few times before. Not my skill set. What exactly is your skill set?” Peter lifted his fingers into air quotes. Then put his head down, and pulled the file back towards him.

“But Peter....” Neal started, but Peter cut him off.

“Are you saying that you’re not a good fit for the White Collar cases?”

Peter snapped his mouth shut, regretting his words as soon as he said them, but he couldn’t bring himself to pull them back, it was Caffrey’s fault that he was wasting his Saturday babysitting. If the kid could stay out of trouble while left on his own, none of this would be needed. Neal pasted on a smile and pulled out his phone.

“I just need to make a phone call.” Neal was asking permission with his tone, with his eyes, with everything but his words. Peter nodded, but his eyes followed Caffrey as he pushed the door open, glanced behind him, then started scanning through his phone’s address book as he descended the stairs to the bullpen – trying to get as much space between him and Peter as possible without actually running.

Which was fair. Peter could admit that he didn’t have a particularly good track record when it came to respecting Neal’s privacy.

Lip reading, when there’s an expectation of privacy, may not be admissible evidence, but Peter didn’t need anything he gleaned to hold up in court. Despite having his back mostly turned, Peter saw enough to know that Neal was cancelling on somebody, and that he wasn’t happy about it at all.

Peter kept him another hour then let him go.

*****

The mirrors were draped in black cloth and the whole house seemed to hum with hushed voices.  The door had been unlocked, and the note on the front had welcomed visitors. Although Peter suspected that they were not the sort of visitors the Davidsons were expecting. But the Davidson's had employed an erstwile butler three years ago to manage the house and their ailing patriach, and Neal was right, the butler **had** done it. 

A dark haired-dark eyed man seemed to be holding court in the main sitting room. “Mr. Michael Davidson?” Peter asked.

Mr. Davidson nodded, and disentangled himself from a lady who could have been his sister, or his wife. “What do you need?” Michael asked tensely, barely restraining some sort of emotion, after he drew them into a slightly more secluded corner.

“We’d like to talk about mortgages...” Peter started and caught the sharp shake of Neal’s head ‘no’ an instant before Michael’s anger turned from controlled to directed.

“Look, as I’ve told my manager, tomorrow will be day six after he died, and I’ll be more than willing to back to work after the shiva, not before.”

 Neal smiled wide and stepped fearlessly into the space of Michael’s anger even as Peter was backing away reflexively. “No, I’m sorry, it’s not about that. We aren’t trying to intrude on your mourning, but you know Charles Wilman, right?”

 “My father’s assistant?” Michael squinted at Neal, and his faced tilted along its axis towards confusion. “Yes, I know him. Who are you again?”

 Peter pulled out his credentials, and Michael actually studied them for a moment before looking up at Peter. “This is about my father?” Michael’s voice carried in the suddenly silent room.

 Peter scrunched his face up, and pinched at his nose. “Sort of,” he said quietly.

 “So it wasn’t a heart attack?” Michaels face flushed and re-rising anger tinged his voice. “Sarah was right, she really was. He was too healthy to have gone so fast. He was training for a marathon in the spring.”

 “No,” Peter put his hands placating. “No, we still think it was a heart attack. And I’m so sorry for your loss. There are just a few matters that Mr. Wilman is best suited to clear up for us. Do you happen to know where he is now?”

Mr. Davidson shook his head. “I haven’t seen him in a while. Maybe he’s at church? There’s one down the street that he goes to. It’s the Methodist one I think.”

Neal pulled out his phone and started tapping at it, like every other teenager in the room. Of course Neal wasn’t supposed to be a teenager. Peter suppressed a roll of his eyes and pulled a card out of his pocket.

“If you do see him, give us a call would you?” Peter asked, and then guided Neal out of the house and down the steps of the brownstone. At the bottom Neal veered to the right, abandoning the SUV big and black and conspicuously parked by the fire hydrant right outside the brownstone.

“Where are you going Neal?” Peter asked, frozen as Neal paced away from him.

“Just a quick walk around the block,” Neal called over his shoulder, like it was a thing he did all the time. “Catch me on the far side.”

Peter suppressed the urge to follow Neal and frog-march him back to the car. The street was a one-way anyway, so Neal’s antics weren’t actually wasting much time.  Wasting time, however, wasn’t actually the point.

 

Neal hopped into the SUV while it was still rolling a little, buckling up as Peter pulled into traffic and clearly pleased with himself in a way that made Peter vicariously pleased and a little anxious. Neal waited until a traffic light had brought the car to a stop to flash a photo from his phone up at Peter.

“Look familiar?” Neal asked, he’d found something, and Peter let the vicarious pleasure gain a little bit of an edge over the more negative suspicions. He gazed obediently at three stories of beautiful stained glass and stone until the light changed, but nothing particularly jumped out at him.

“Should it?” Peter questioned as Neal paged through shots from a couple of angles.

“It’s the church the GPS tried to send us to last weekend.”

 

* * *

 

Neal slipped into Peter’s office late Tuesday morning. There wasn’t much going on, just a waiting game on contacts, so Peter grunted out, “You’re late,” as a greeting, without much heat behind it.

Neal shrugged, and slipped a flyer onto Peter’s desk. Peter glanced at it, “Building Trust in Religious Communities”, then went back to the paperwork that filled too large a portion of his life as Special Agent in Charge.

“I want to go to this,” Neal stated, and it wasn’t a question, though it could be.

“Good for you,” Peter stared at the flyer a moment longer then, trying to figure out Neal’s angle. There was a headshot of the speaker, olive skin, glasses, male pattern baldness. “What does that have to do with me? It’s in your radius, in this building as a matter of fact.”

“Thank you Peter, I do know where it is. Hughes said you have to come with me.” Neal shrugged, and it occurred to Peter to wonder when Neal had managed to speak to Hughes.

“Why?” Peter grouched, but he knew where this was going.

“Babysitting I guess,” Neal shrugged. Peter could have been imagining it, but there was something almost listless, like everything was too much effort, in Neal’s tone.

“No,” Peter corrected. “I mean why this seminar.”

“I dunno,” Neal grinned “Broaden my.... skill set.” Neal’s finger’s went up in a blatantly mocking set of air quotes. Peter sighed, but acquiesced.  If this was payback for the ill-timed almost-threat from the weekend, he could accept that.

There was a table laden with food outside the lecture theater on the fourth floor. Peter expected Caffrey to breeze by it with a grimace of distaste, but while he got the expression right, for some reason Neal lingered.

“You know, I’ve had something like forty five hundred meals provided by the state,” Neal mused, as he picked over the egg salad and tuna sandwich halves and poked experimentally at the flaccid lettuce garnish. “And all of them were better than this.” 

He picked up a couple of smoked turkey halves, and stacked them on a paper plate, and Peter did a double take, he actually he picked up several.

“I see you’re still going to eat them.” Peter tapped at the brown bag he had with him, glad that El had brought home leftovers.

Neal fixed him with a quiet look, but didn’t say anything.

 

* * *

 

Peter’s card got him nowhere. No one called. Mr. Wilman never went back to work. Although arguably his employment had been terminated with the elder Mr. Davidson’s death, it seems he was still working in some capacity. His clothes were still in the suite that had been assigned to him, and his car was still in the back lane.

Peter and Neal had been let in through the separate entrance to search the apartment and just the apartment – there was a grumpy old uncle standing watch to ensure that they didn’t ‘accidently’ search the home beyond the interior access door between the apartment and the main house. The bed was rumpled and a speck of toothpaste in the sink hadn’t hardened into an electric blue crust yet. He’d been there, probably slept there overnight. It’s just that the Davidsons hadn’t seen them. As long as their grandfather's health and estate was being managed, the Davidsons had no real care for Mr. Wilman’s personal business. 

So the FBI went looking as gently as possible. Canvassing the area wasn’t exactly productive. There wasn’t any real hostility, just a lot of doctors, and lawyers who were willing to cooperate as far as was convenient so long as you didn’t try to strong-arm them. The problem lay in the fact that Mr. Wilman was hired help, and generally not part of the community.

On the other hand, pavement pounding on a chill evening was a really good way to keep one particular man out of trouble. The man in question was dragging his feet. Neal was a few paces behind and a quick glance revealed low energy and low enthusiasm when Neal thought Peter wasn’t looking. The smile was still there, though, fast and bright, the moment Neal sensed Peter’s eyes on him.

“Next one?” Peter asked, gesturing at a double-brownstone, three stories high. Night had fully arrived, and the street light cast Neal’s face in a ghoulish pallor. Neal’s smile was back though, as he bound up the steps two at a time to catch up. A blink of an eye later, the moment Peter’s back was turned, it was gone. Neal seemed to have forgotten that brass knockers make great mirrors. This would be the last stop--if Neal was getting ill, it would be better to send him home than risk catching whatever it was. 

The knock was answered by a handsome smile directed rather obviously at Neal, and an invitation out of the cold. The house was gorgeous, with silver mirrors and dark wood throughout. An upward-curving staircase led from the foyer to the second floor, and strains of Gotye were coming up from less well lit stairs that curved down to a rec room or basement.

“What can I do for you?” The woman, probably the homeowner, asked with more real warmth than the pair of them had received all day.

“We’re looking for the Davidson’s butler, have you seen him recently?” Peter didn’t hold out a picture, like they would if they were canvassing strangers. The woman nodded slightly and for a moment Peter felt a lighter on his feet. In the next instant Neal slipped out from behind him and disappeared down the stairs in the direction of the music, as the woman answered, “I’m sorry, Agent Burke, I’m not really sure who that is.” Peter’s mind skipped a little, trying to match the permissive body language to the negation in her words. And Neal was downstairs.

“I... Do you have a housekeeper?” Peter asked, a little distracted; the nod must have been permission directed at Neal. “Or an au pair, or someone who might know Mr. Wilman personally?”

“I’m sorry, no, we get staff service in to clean, but we don’t have a permanent arrangement with anyone.”

“Can I...” Peter gestured at the stairs, and got consent.

“You cancelled on me?” Peter could hear a voice on the stairs, the thin, slightly too high pitch of a teenager who was clearly pissed off, but not yelling. “Now you’re here today? What’s going on? My test is on Friday.”

“You’re good to go. I have told you that before. You don’t need me to boost your ego on this stuff, you know it cold.”  Neal’s voice was light and friendly, like he had a good relationship with the kid. “But I do need your help. Do you know this guy?”

“What are you, a cop by day, tutor by night?” The kid asked, and Peter froze and listened closely for Neal’s answer.

“That’s about right,” Neal laughed. “But I haven’t had time to do much tutoring at all in the last month and I’m not a cop, I work with the FBI. And they’re looking for Charles Wilman.”

 “Well, he’s an asshole.”

 “So you know him?” Neal asked, and Peter fought the urge to join them. This was the first lead they’d found.

 “Yeah, he’s dating Alan’s sister. For some reason he’s really proud of the fact that he went to school to be a glorified house-keeper. The Brit has a real stick up his ass.”

 “Do you know where he is now?” Neal asked, gently guiding the conversation back on track.

 “Not exactly, they’re on vacation for two weeks. They’ve been planning it for ages, but then he’ll be in church on Sunday. He always is.”

 “Thanks, Chris.” Peter could tell Neal was moving, and he backed up the stairs step by step so as not to startle Neal right away.

 “You’ll kill it Friday, and maybe I’ll see you around.”

 Neal caught sight of Peter frozen on the stairs, but kept climbing, determined and stoic.

 “I tutored him, Peter.”  Neal said, as he passed, his voice low and unashamed. “Get over it.”

* * *

 

Neal found more talks to drag Peter to during the week, and the rubber band ball flew a little wider each weekend.

Saturday, with no more progress on the random mortgages, and 7 more days until Mr. Wilman was back from wherever his paper-trail-less vacation had taken him. The tip of sun was just visible over the tops of the nearby buildings, and single spot of light landed like a focussed beam at eye level to any man unfortunate enough to be seated in the conference room. Peter sat with his back to the window, but Neal was facing the full glare, his eyes closed and his face tipped up into the last direct sunlight before the afternoon was cast into shadow. His phone wove in and out, back and forth between tense fingers, an almost nervous tick that belied the relaxed calm of Caffrey’s face.

“Are we leaving anytime soon?” Neal asked, his eyes still closed.

“I don’t know,” Peter drawled, allowing his gaze to slide across the table. “Are you going to break this for me?”

Neal snorted and opened his eyes, blinking into blindness for a moment before shifting to shadow, even though there was still a sliver of direct light left.

“There isn’t enough information until Mr. Wilman returns, there are no leads, and this case is....” Neal paused for a moment to look down, pulling the thin folder across the table towards him, its easy slide emphasizing the dearth of evidence available. Peter suspected that Neal knew the detail he was ostensibly searching for. “Three years older than I am, and you’ve been bashing me over the head with it for the past two weeks. So no, I don’t think I’m going to break this case, Peter, I’m sorry.”

Neal grabbed his copy of the case file and stood up. “I have to make a phone call,” he announced, and left the room.

Peter watched Neal slouch towards his nominal desk in the bull pen, seat himself, and then look back up towards the conference room. He stared at Peter as his phone dialled, and kept looking as he clearly enunciated that he was very sorry, and was going to have to cancel again this weekend. 

 After he hung up, he opened the folder at his own desk rather than rejoining Peter in his office, and sat looking down at it while flipping a pencil over his thumb. He probably wasn’t reading--he probably wasn’t doing anything except killing time and sulking--but if he wanted to do it on his own, Peter could give up the pretense of the case and get some of his own work done.

 Peter kept Neal another two hours, then released him into the wild.

* * *

 

Sunday morning saw Peter at church. Not his church, but church nonetheless, for first time in a long time, and with Neal at his side. Dressed uncharacteristically casually, Neal fit in better than Peter did, but they were near the back, sitting in a pew and watching. There was no need to make a scene, not in a room housing more lawyers than you could shake a stick at.

Charles was there, seated half way up the aisle next to what Peter presumed was Alan’s sister. Church wasn’t exactly as he remembered. Reverend Tsang was lively and excited, with grey hair and a quick smile and earnest intensity. In his childhood, there had been more grandeur, more solemnity. Maybe it was a difference in denominations. Maybe the prayers had seemed less trite in Latin.

Neal was vibrating very slightly, every now and then. His face was perfectly straight, almost drawn, but….

Peter leaned over. “Are you laughing?”

Neal shook his head, to all appearances perfectly solemn. “Shhh, it’s rude to talk during the sermon.”  Then Neal vibrated again, his whole body shaking in silent laughter. Peter clasped his hands in his lap and waited out a perfectly legitimate discussion on honesty in relationships.

When the hour was up, the bodies filed out, their hats, scarves, and black coats and boots layered over blue jeans, khakis, and a rainbow of buttoned up cardigans. Charles stood and worked his way to the back, chatting with an elderly couple who were over-dressed for the occasion in proper suits. There was a pause, and Charles handed over his card, then tucked his arm into Alan’s sister’s and made his way out of the chapel.

Peter transferred his gaze to Jones and Diane and a moment later, when no shock wave of offense reflected off the arrest and rode a wave of gossip back into the chapel. It wasn’t as if no one would hear about it, but there’s no point in encouraging the tranformation of an otherwise straightforward case into a nightmare. Peter turned back to Neal, grimly satisfied. “They’ve picked him up.”

Neal wasn’t paying attention. Neal wasn’t anywhere close, he was several bodies closer to the front, moving slowly against the trickle of bodies. Peter fought his way upstream, and failed to surprise Neal with a hand on his shoulder.

“You recognize that guy?” Neal asked, gazing up at a congregant deep in conversation with the Reverend.

“Yeah, I do.” It wasn’t hard to call that particular face to mind, and it bothered Peter--bothered him as much as the dead end fraud case that they’d been beating their heads on for too long. “That’s Jeffrey Sainger, from the bank.”

“That’s what I see, too,” Neal concurred slowly. “It’s a strange coincidence, isn’t it?” Neal turned away--he was right, there wasn’t much else they could do, but Peter knew that kernel of sand would cause the same sort of irritation in Neal as it did in him. The only question was, who would produce the first pearl? Right now, though, there was nowhere to go with it, and they had a suspect in custody. Peter turned and quick-stepped to get in front of Neal.

 “I don’t believe in coincidence.” Peter lead the way out of the chapel and out to the SUV waiting to carry them back to the office.


	4. The End

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone finds solutions

The next week, Peter hauled Neal home for dinner. Well, more to the point, he extended Elizabeth’s invitation Friday night, then left him alone. When Neal cheerfully arrived on their front stoop at 2pm as ordered, Peter snuck upstairs and checked Neal’s tracking data, but he hadn’t done much more than pace around his loft all morning.

“That was delicious, Elizabeth,” Neal said as he shifted back in his chair.

“Are you sure you won’t have another helping?” Elizabeth nodded at the glass dish still half full of golden rolled crepes.

“I would for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, but I’m afraid if I had much more my jacket wouldn’t close.” The last was patently untrue--Neal’s jacket, if anything, looked a little on the large size.

“So take some home then, and you can live that dream” Elizabeth suggested. “There’s probably enough for another breakfast, lunch and dinner." 

Neal arranged his cutlery neatly on his plate, fork and knife parallel, and folded his napkin next to his setting. “I would love to,” Neal accepted, studiously not looking at Peter.

“Consider it a thank-you for loaning me my husband for the weekend,“ Elizabeth also arranged her cutlery on her plate like it was a secret signal. Peter glanced down at his own setting with the fork and knife, abandoned on the plate and making a skewed 1/3 pie slice out of the radius of the plate.

“It’s the entire weekend, is it?” Neal eyed Peter speculatively. 

Peter shot his wife a warning glance and stood up, carrying his plate from the table to the kitchen. Neal rushed to stand too, even as Elizabeth held her hand out.

“Neal, you’re a guest, let Peter clean up.”

“Just Peter?”

“I cooked.”

Neal grinned, and pushed back in his chair, lacing his fingers behind his head. “I could totally get used to this.”

* * *

Neal’s tracking data found him back down at the church, sitting immobile in what was probably the chapel. Peter spotted his head the minute he walked into the nearly empty room. It wasn’t bowed in prayer or contemplation, but alert and focused on the door leading to the back room.

“What are we looking at?” Peter slid into the seat next to Neal.

“I’m not sure,” Neal answered, absently, still focussed ahead. “But something didn’t feel right last week, and...”

“And you’ve been coming here in your spare time.” Neal glanced down at his ankle then back up to the door. “So why did you text me today?”

The door Neal had been staring at opened, and a deacon emerged with a sharply dressed woman in a suit. Neal nodded in that direction, as if it were supposed to supply all the answers.

“She’s an appraiser,” Neal supplied, when he caught Peter’s look. Then he pushed out of his seat and squeezed by Peter into the aisle. He sauntered in their direction with a loose limbed confidence that Peter would admire if it didn’t let Neal get away with so damn much.

“Hi,” Neal reached out to shake the deacon’s hand. “I’m Neal Caffrey. I was just here last week. I was thinking about joining...”

The deacon reached out to shake his hand, but looked a little bemused as Peter came to stand behind Peter.

“This is my friend, Peter,” Neal turned and included him the introduction, then paused and added deliberately. “He and his wife might be considering switching as well.”

Peter nodded, then glanced back at the disappearing form of the appraiser, an idea forming in his head that he immediately decided to run with. “Only, I’m a little concerned. So many churches with beautiful properties like this one are, well, insolvent.” Peter caught Neal’s approving nod out of the corner of his eye. “We don’t want to get all invested emotionally only to have the community foreclosed out from under us.”

“We do have a mortgage, if that’s what you’re asking.” The deacon replied with equanimity, following Peter’s glance out the door. “But we’re on top of it, and it’s more than fifteen years old and we have the reserve to pay it off outright if we wanted to.”

“So,” Peter stuck one hand in his pants and pointed the thumb of his other hand at the door. “That was...”

“That was an appraiser from the bank. They come by every few months.” The deacon answered, and started ushering them along, on a prospective member’s tour or something. “I suspect they have the same concerns you do. We have big old property, and we are a charitable organization. With expensive upkeep things have the potential to get tight, just not here.” The deacon guided them into a narrow hallway and showed them into a small library with the walls lined with books and few tables laid out in the middle. “The bank manager calls every few months to set up an appointment. My personal opinion is that these people are just his way keeping tabs on us. Funny though, this one had the zip code wrong on her sheet. The address and everything was right though.It was a good thing she used the head G-d gave her rather than relying on one of those GPS thingies or she'd have ended up in the Bronx.”  The deacon ushered them out and guided them past what was probably the Reverend’s office and a general office to a smaller chapel.  “We aren’t paying for it, though, and there is always someone around in the case of inquiries so no one minds much.”

Peter glanced over at Neal, who had a funny twisted look on his face. “I think I left something in the car. Peter, why don’t you finish the tour without me?”

Peter opened his mouth to protest, but Neal was already gone. He slipped out sight between one blink and another, leaving Peter to make small talk with the deacon.

True to his word, Neal was in the SUV when Peter was finished. The engine was on, and Neal had pulled the NYC map out of the glove box. Had big red X-s dotting the field, and was busy tapping another address in when Peter opened the door.

“What do you have?” Peter asked.

“A simple typo,” Neal said, showing Peter the map. There was at least one X in the spot of every victimized homeowner. “From 7th Avenue to 7th Street, East to West, Brooklyn to Queens, Manhattan to the Bronx, there are so many little ways an address can go wrong.“

“In a city this big, it means that a bad address can be assessed and mortgaged without the owners even knowing about it.”

“Except,” Neal looked up at the church.

“Except for the notice sent by the USPS,” Peter finished the sentence and groaned. “This is going to bury us in paperwork.”

* * *

The drowned vestiges of summer’s green still clung to the ground by City Hall Park, but it wasn’t anything to look at. Peter kept his eyes fixed in front of him, walking with purpose and not inviting comment. Not that that would help.

Caffrey lagged behind his right shoulder, a little half-skip every six or seven paces letting Peter know he’d hit that awkward pace that wasn’t quite a jog for Caffrey, but couldn’t be covered by a quick walk either.

“Any chance I can book this weekend off?” Caffrey asked, upbeat and bright, as if he didn’t really care about the answer, but was testing the waters anyway. Of course if he hadn’t cared at all, he wouldn’t have waited until Peter couldn’t see his eyes. “Not on call, no FBI, no work?”

“Want to tell me why?” Peter offered, although he figured they both knew why.

“A little R and R?” Neal offered, and spread his hands, palms up. “You have to admit you’ve been riding my ass kind of hard lately.”

“Felons don’t get vacation,” Peter snapped out, eminently aware that he was inviting conversation by not shutting it down with a flat no.

True to form, Caffrey continued to press, his voice smooth and placating. “Not vacation, just... down time.”

“Vacation,” Peter insisted bluntly.

“I could be sick,” Neal offered, as if it was an optional thing, something he could choose or not choose. Which was fair in a way, he’d been slower lately, a little less bright a little less bouncy. Peter stopped in his tracks and half turned, his gaze taking the man in from to foot. He did look a little off--thinner, maybe, or tired.  

“Are you sick?” Peter asked, trying not to put too much concern into his tone, because that would just be asking for it.

“No,” Neal temporized, looking away. Peter turned and resumed his walk, forcing Neal to speak a little louder as he scrambled to keep up. “But I could be.”

“Then you wouldn’t need to book time off,” Peter pointed out, smiling a little maliciously. “You’d have a doctor’s note.”

“I can totally get a doctor’s note.” Peter closed his eyes briefly, and imagined Haversham, a stethoscope around his neck offering to show off his medical credentials. Peter had no doubt Neal could get a doctor’s note, real or forged.

“And I would totally pinch your cheeks and feed you chicken soup,” Peter agreed, nodding his head ever so slightly.

Caffrey’s mouth snapped shut with an audible click. “I’ll take that as a no, then,” he said carefully, after a pause, getting back to the original request for time off.

“Yeah, you got it.” Peter agreed as he turned into the gleaming office tower. “That’s a no.”

* * *

  “You seem almost cheerful.” Peter looked up from the case file to discover the sun had set.

“What?” Neal’s hand reached out almost automatically to grab for the rubber band ball at the corner of the conference table, but Peter snapped it up before him.

“This guy hasn’t been getting so much air time today,” Peter clarified.  “I’m wondering if I should be worried.”

Neal poked at the take out container by his elbow, but left the chopsticks in place. “These guys have an A grade, only 3 points gone, so it’s a really solid A.”

“I have no concerns about the quality of the takeout,” Peter warned.

“I got a really good deal, and given that we’ll probably make an arrest tomorrow, I’m sure the Bureau is going to get its money’s worth on paying for our dinner.”

“That’s still not what I mean.”

“So what exactly do you mean?”

“I mean you haven’t touched your phone all day.” Neal’s lips thinned to a tight line.

“Well, you’ve taught me there’s no point in making plans with anyone but you. You trust me to go to church on my own, but apparently that's about it.” There was a bitter note to Neal’s tone, and his face had shifted from light good humour to dead straight. “I’ve learned that lesson, is that what you want to hear?”

“Neal,” Peter asked, a little stunned, but if he was honest with himself Neal wasn’t being particularly unfair. What else could he have expected once Peter found out about his extracurricular activities. “I was never going to send you for a Morrissey hearing, but you can’t expect me to just turn my back on you.”

“I don’t know what you want from me Peter.” Neal shrugged, and turned his head back to the table. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

Peter sighed. Talking a rational response out of Neal was sometimes like trying to talk water out of a stone. “Look, we should pack it in for the night.” Neal nodded, and stacked his papers silently. Still not looking at Peter, he tapped the top of the pile pensively but didn’t speak until Peter had stood, ready to head out.

“You’re logging my overtime, right?” Neal asked, and Peter could see the effort that he made to look straight at him. “Because there’s been a lot these past few months.” Neal grinned but the smile didn’t even begin to reach his eyes. “Who knows when the extra twelve bucks will come in handy, right?”

"I'll deal with your extra paperwork when get put this case to bed," Peter promised.

* * *

“You know, you’re pretty creative.” Peter waved Caffrey back to stand in the doorway, effectively blocking Jeffrey Saigner into his office.

“It’s hard to attribute random error to malfeasance. And it’s really hard to trance the original mortgage documents given all the the mortgage derivatives that your bank sells off in.” Jeffrey stood, and Peter could tell he was off balance, but he covered it with bluster.

“I don’t appreciate the tone,” Jeffrey pointed.  “You don’t have an appointment, and if I talk to you it’s just a courtesy, so I suggest you dial this down.

Peter let a smile grace his lips and he dropped himself uninvited into the chair in front of the desk without sacrificing any of his authority.

“The key was the church, and Reverend Tsang was eventually very helpful with locating the mortgage notices.” Peter held up a folded sheet of paper and offered it to Jeffrey across the desk. Jeffrey took it but only glanced at the first line. "You randomized the dollar amounts, and made sure that different people handled the processing of each mortgage, then. Tsang handled the assesments, and you made sure that the mortgage was guareteed to the 'typo' address. If someone picked up on the typo before it was processed, then the mortgage just didn't go through," Peter paused to take a breath, but Neal picked up right where he'd left off.

"Tsang paid the mortgage, off of the churches books, for an year or two to ensure enough time for you to package the product into a derivative and _archive_ the paper work, then he let it default.He donated his cut to the church. What did you do with your take?"  

“You couldn’t possibly have gotten a warrant for the church documents.” Jeffrey asserted, but he looked a little green.

“We didn’t have to,” Peter corrected. "They weren't church documents."

“Well then,” Jeffrey handed the warrant back and edged towards the door, his body language screaming that he was going to run, while Neal leaned against the door jam placidly watching them both. “Matt can help you with that.” Jeffrey came face to face with Neal and tried to dodge sideways, but Neal had casually braced himself on both sides of the door frame. “If you’ll excuse me, I have to be... somewhere else.”

“Not going to happen,” Neal shook his head gently, and Jeffrey looked back at Peter, who was holding up another folded sheet. He offered it to Jeffrey.

“See, we have another warrant as well.”

 Jeffry wasn’t stupid. He took a deep breath and took a step forward to stand equidistant between Peter and Neal, his hands clearly visible.

“Then I would like to see a lawyer.”

* * *

 Almost as if it were part of the clean up process, Peter put the last of the breakfast dishes away, then paced over to the front door and pulled his briefcase onto the dining room table. Elizabeth gave him a look that said more than words could have, but in the end she just dropped a peck on his cheek, and went to retrieve her own paperwork.

If he was honest with himself, Peter knew he didn’t need to be working, but he'd told Neal he'd process it as soon as they closed the case. And the case was closed. Friday night had gone a bit  late, and  Peter decided to get through the Fibonacci sequences of paperwork related to keeping everyone insured and working on a Saturday morning that should have been was just coffee, Elizabeth, the newspaper, and trying to figure out what he could call Neal in for in the afternoon.

Peter flipped through his final report and pulled out the packet of papers that was Neal’s overtime request. Really, it should have been simple, but nothing to do with Neal was ever particularly easy, and the information required by the Board of Prisons was no different. Given the number of times he’d hauled Neal in to work before this case, and Neal had never asked for overtime before, Peter strongly suspected that this was a private form of retaliation. Oh, Peter had no doubt that the forms themselves were real. There were sections to fill out about the nature of the work, and a whole page was required to explain why he had been unable to get the overtime request approved in advance. Apparently all overtime requested by corporations using prisoner labour was supposed to be approved by a committee. Peter was tempted to fill in “Rescue Mission”, but decided that if he filled it in correctly he could save the text for reuse on a later form.

Half an hour later, Peter put the finishing touches on the bureaucratic bullshit he’d spread, and flipped to the final page, a worksheet had forwarded him that could be used to calculate the wage (minus garnishes) of… fifteen dollars that Caffrey had earned working two months of weekends.

Peter blinked, and double-checked the wage table. He let out a long hard breath and imagined Neal’s tired face in a suit jacket getting progressively larger. Elizabeth looked up from her work, and Peter tried very hard not to take his sudden anger out on the laptop in front of him.

“I think I’ve missed something crucial.” Peter told the screen.

“And you’ll fix it,” Elizabeth replied, with simple confidence, stilling his hand by holding it in hers.  Peter slipped the case files back into his briefcase and pulled out his laptop.

* * *

Peter let himself into June’s on a winter Sunday morning. Neal answered the door to his suite, dressed but unfinished, his cufflinks unfastened and his tie undone. Peter could see the folds of Neal’s jacket, its lining in pieces and the fine tools of a tailor strewn on the dining room table.

“Are you feeling OK, Peter? You didn't call me in yesterday, so I was almost starting to worry.” Neal asked, glancing back at the table, but not blocking Peter’s advance. “Or did we catch a case? I’m sorry, I haven’t had any reception all night.” Neal paused “Oh. Has a satellite gone down? Is that why you’re here? You can’t triangulate my position anymore?”

“I know exactly where you are Caffrey.” Peter grinned pointedly. “No, I had your service cut.”

“Why would you do that?” There was just an edge of annoyance in Neal’s voice. Peter pulled a Blackberry from his jacket, identical to the one he knew Neal had in his pocket.

“I want you to use an FBI-issued phone from now on. So that the bill will go to the department,” Peter tossed the phone, and Neal caught it, then held himself still. “You should change over your address book now.” Peter suggested, putting a force behind his words that made it more of an order. Neal still stood frozen, though his gaze shifted from Peter to the ground.

Peter rolled his eyes. “I get a copy of your phone and data records anyway. Just do it.” Neal nodded once, sharply, then pulled out his original phone and started scrolling through the numbers.

"You drained all your reserves to get your hands on that awing you swan-dived on to didn't you." Peter asked, not really expecting an answer. He paced over to the window, gazing out past the reflections at the first hint of light spilling grayly onto the snow covered terrace.

“I put in your overtime papers,” Peter told the window, loud enough for Neal to hear.

“Thank you,” Neal’s reply was distracted and disinterested, as if manually copying address book entries was the more interesting activity.

“And I put in for some per diems. This month’s should be processed by this afternoon,” Peter added, and shifted his body slightly so that he could see Neal’s reflection in the glass. “Although you’ll have to file those weekly from now on.”

“My what?” Neal looked up, and his fingers paused on the keypad.

“The per diem, basic rate for when the job forces us to travel away from home, forty-five a day for food and travel.”

Neal tilted his head and carefully stretched his left leg out from the table. “I’m not travelling, no more than 2 miles.”

“This isn’t what the state considers your home,” Peter turned so that he was facing a Neal whose features were tight.

“Why are we back to that? I swear...” Peter put up his hand, and Neal fell silent.

“Prison wages assume that you’re _in_ prison–with all the attendant... economies.”

"I wouldn't say it's economical. Deoderant's a cheaper on the outside." Neal protested, then he closed his mouth, and the next words that came out were more calculated. “So... how far back can I go?”

“One month,” Peter replied.

“Every day I come in?”

“Every day you’re on call, and not in prison.” Peter shrugged.  “I’ve got the details somewhere.”

Neal nodded, his eyes focussed on the table, and shifting back and forth like he was doing calculations.  ”I can... I can make that work.”

“No more random lunchtime lectures?”

“Well, now, that depends on the menu,” Caffrey grinned.

“Dinner next Saturday?” Peter asked abruptly, and it really wasn’t supposed to be a test.

“I dunno,” Caffrey replied. “My boss has a tendency to make we work weekends.”

“On Saturdays?” Peter replied, going for aghast, but the sound of his own voice was more smug than he’d intended. “I’ll have to see about putting a stop to that.”

“Then sure,” Neal agreed.

Peter turned back to the window, no longer the perfect mirror as blood from the sun stained the terrace. Behind him, Peter could hear whispers of cotton and wool sliding across each other.

“You know you could have asked someone for help?” Peter told the violent sunrise. The shifting behind him stilled, and the silence behind him made Peter risk a look.

Neal stood in the center of the room, his overcoat hiding a suit just a touch too big, and his hat at an obnoxious angle. Caffrey grinned wide and painfully open.

“I did. I asked you.”

**Author's Note:**

> This work is completed. I have a strong tendency towards typos and so I'm doing a final proofing pass before posting each chunk. That said, I am 100% sure that there will still be typos and any help in finding them would be greatly appreciated.


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